Evacuees return home after a heroic stand
Outages: As fire and wind wane, PG&E turns lights back on
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. moved quickly Wednesday to restore power to hundreds of thousands of customers it had cut off in two backtoback outages as part of its fireprevention efforts.
Following calmerthanexpected winds, utility officials said that the weather had cleared enough everywhere except in Kern County to inspect equipment and lines and turn power back on.
Roughly 64,000 customer accounts systemwide remained blacked out as of Wednesday evening, said Denny Boyles, a PG&E spokesman. That figure refers to the total without power from Saturday’s and Tuesday’s power shutoffs, Boyles said.
Getting electricity flowing again can take up to 48 hours because workers must check tens of thousands of miles of
equipment and lines by vehicle, foot and air.
“Thank you for your patience, for your understanding,” PG&E Corp. CEO Bill Johnson said at an evening press conference. “Let’s all hope we can get back to normal soon, and stay that way for a long while.”
PG&E deployed 6,300 field personnel as well as 1,100 workers from other energy companies in a “mutual aid” arrangement.
The utility confirmed 83 incidents of equipment damage related to high winds during the outages that began Saturday. The damage, spokeswoman Tamar Sarkissian said, could have ignited fires if lines were energized.
Utility meteorologists don’t expect dangerous winds over the next week, but they also don’t expect any rain, which would ameliorate the dangerously dry conditions.
PG&E canceled shutoffs planned in Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties early Wednesday morning as the weather improved. Marin County was also spared from needing more blackouts, though some residents and businesses remain in the dark.
Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties had power restored from the Saturday shutoff by Wednesday midday, PG&E said.
In Sonoma County, where the firefighters continue to battle the devastating Kincade Fire, restoration efforts were swift, with the percentage of people who regained power rising from 12% to 45% in a matter of hours Wednesday. By the evening, it was 70%. In Napa, 80% had power back on; in Solano, the figure was 100%.
In Marin, where virtually the entire county had been blacked out Saturday, utility officials said Wednesday evening that 99% of customers had gotten power back.
Dan Schalit, who lives with his two children and wife in Mill Valley, had been without power since Saturday. He has hosted a potluck dinner at his house with neighbors for several nights in a row.
“One good thing that’s happened is that our community pulled itself together and came through,” he said.
Schalit, a real estate professional who works from home, said not having electricity for so long and not having cell coverage for nine hours on Tuesday upended his world.
“For someone who works from home like me, this has been the worst of circumstances,” he said.
Across the street, John Kuch and his wife Mary Garnett had been living out of their cooler for five days. A carton of organic milk, some meat and cheese, and apples decked their sparsely stocked fridge.
“Communication from PG&E has been gray and not the best,” Garnett said.
She owns a small business called Mary Garnett Skincare in Mill Valley and saw a complete loss of revenue.
“I’m out at least $3,000 to $4,000 this week, which means I’ll be putting in 12hour shifts next week,” she said.
Garnett said the scariest part of the outages for her was the loss of cell coverage on Tuesday. Her carrier restored coverage via generator power Tuesday night, she said, but not being able to contact her 14yearold son Jack, who commutes to San Francisco on public transportation because he learns differently, and his school most of the day was nerveracking.
“I was very tense, I’ve never had that feeling before,” she said. “After Jack came back home from school, I went to bed still in fightorflight mode.”
Kuch said they’re thinking about getting a generator to prepare for what is now a new normal. Despite all they've been through this week, they consider themselves lucky for not being displaced or losing property because of fires.
Another Mill Valley resident, Michael Fischer, who had been without power since Saturday, said he was going to buy a solarpowered battery to keep the furnace on.
“It’s been cold in the mornings, too cold to even read,” he said.
Fischer said he and his wife have been staying with friends in San Francisco since Tuesday to stay warm.
Chronicle staff writers Alejandro Serrano and Lauren Hernández contributed to this report. Shwanika Narayan and Carolyn Said are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: shwanika.narayan@sfchronicle.com, csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @shwanika, @csaid